Bullroarer Update 26 - Preview #1

[LordOfTheSquids]

Bullroarer is CLOSED
Server Closing Time: Wednesday, 04/15, ~5:00 PM EST (Subject to change).

Mists of Wilderland
"Through the ages of the world, many peoples have inhabited the Wilderland. In the latter days of the Third Age, Beornings, Dwarves, and the Great Eagles all consider themselves protectors over these northern lands. With conflict brewing in Gundabad these protectors now share the common goal of keeping the Wells of Langflood safe."

This update includes improvements to the new quests, some Rune-keeper changes, festival updates, numerous bug fixes and more. Please yell at us about any bugs, balance feedback, or issues other you encounter! If you see something we forgot to add to the notes let us know!

News and Notes:

• The patch to today's build is a big one and will take a while, this was necessary to implement some performance fixes we hope will improve your experience.
• Bullroarer character database has been wiped.
• Character Copy to Bullroarer will be available. Please let us know if you encounter any issues. (Character copies can fail if attempted when the server is down).
• Account Services are also available for copy. Please let us know as soon as possible if any of these services fail to copy properly.
• This update is a work in progress and the patch notes are not intended to cover every change. If you find something we left out you think is important, let us know and we can add it to the notes.

Classes

• Beornings have improved strafing and attacking while strafing in bear form.
• Captain and Loremaster pets now follow to the side of the player and at a closer distance.
• Champions - Bumping up their general DPS across the board. Possibly not as much as they need, but we'll get there.
• Burglars - Startling Twist should now properly remove corruptions again.
• Rune-keeper Lightning Crits:
  - Lightning Rune-keepers were made too reliant on critical hits by the huge lightning critical bonuses they received from offensive attunement, these have been re balanced.
  - Bumps RK lightning skill dps by about 10%
  - Epic Conclusion DoT now lasts for (4->8) pulses.
  - Epic Conclusion no longer consumes buffs.
  - Ceaseless Argument & Writ of Lightning now both have 3s CDs.

Crafting:

• The Ploughman's Loaves recipe now produces the correct crit result. It was previously producing Rye Flour Oatcakes.

Housing:

• Premium houses now include a separate chest with 25 slots. These chests are unique to each address and items placed into the chest will not be accessible from other properties.
• Items stored in the standard house chest are moved to the shared housing chest when the property is abandoned, sold, or foreclosed.

Items:

• The Earring of Spring's Arrival, Earring of Spring's Promise, and Earring of Spring's Rite mistakenly suggested that you could summon flower petals around your target, when they only summon petals around yourself. The item descriptions have been updated.
• West Rohan Endgame - Quickbeam now charges progressively more Fangorn Leaf for more potent IXP runes.
• Two-handed Wayfarer Axes are now properly categorized as axes instead of swords.
• Stilettos are now spelled stilettos instead of stillettos.
• The Shelob vital portrait frame will now be correctly visible when active on a targeted player.
• Gift-giver's Brand is now an account bound currency instead of a character bound currency.

Monster Play:

• Weaver skills Tainted Kiss, Virulent Poison, and Mephitic Kiss now use tactical damage like other Acid skills.

Quests & Adventure Areas:

• Made some adjustments to reduce tedium in 'Sessionplay: The Fall of Moria'
  - Reduced the vitality of the cave-claws and deep-claws in Azanarukar
  - Removed some of Nafni's slower-paced skills
  - Added a new skill with a 30 second cooldown: Nafni's Speed
  - Nafni's Speed boosts our playable dwarf's runspeed by 150%, letting him zip through the grand hall of Moria much more quickly
• The quest formerly known as "The Ash of Gorgoroth" has been updated and re-written to reflect the current Disenchantment system.
• Made some adjustments to reduce tedium in 'Sessionplay: We Cannot Get Out'
  - Reduced the vitality of the several types of Orcs (except for Mazog)
• Made some adjustments to reduce tedium in 'Sessionplay: The Prisoner of Sammath Baul'
  - Reduced the vitality of the slugs in Sammath Baul, and removed their slowing puddles
  - Lowered the duration of the 'Motivating...' induction from 7 seconds to 3 seconds
  - Lowered the duration of the 'Persuading...' induction from 10 seconds to 2 seconds
  - Removed some of the Bloodletter's unnecessary skill clutter (Dark Faith, Time of Waste, Staying Alive)
• Made some adjustments to reduce tedium in 'Sessionplay: The Fate of Laerdan'
  - Reduced the vitality of Orcs, Half-orcs, and Angmarim
• Made some adjustments to reduce tedium in 'Sessionplay: Daughter of Strife'
  - Reduced the vitality of the Durub Orcs (but not the leader)
• Houses of Lamentation - Morloth - Morloth's Roots now start out of combat for 3 seconds upon spawning in to allow players more time to get within range before they begin using Quaking Earth.
• Ford of Bruinen - Elladan and Elrohir have been buffed in all group sizes and now have rapid power regeneration.
• Minas Morgul endgame quests now give additional reputation tokens
• Minas Morgul 3person and 6person instances now give reputation tokens on all difficulties, including solo.
• - One of the Treasures of Lhingris is now accessible again... just by a different path.
• The following steed granting items from the Buried Treasure event are no longer unique and will now be account bound instead of character bound: Treasure Laden Steed, Cave-claw Steed, Treasure Laden Goat, Harvest-brew Goat.
• Carrying chicken consumable items available from hobnanigans, and now also from buried treasure event barter, will now trigger a Consume Consumables deed on use.
• The carrying chicken consumables channel will now properly break in combat if you are hit.
• The face paint and carrying chicken consumables now properly stack to 50 in inventory.
• The barter costs of many items on the Hobnanigans rewards vendors have been reduced. The ability to barter for specific chicken tokens has been removed since it was no longer necessary.
• The Hobnanigans vendors have exported some of their goods to Ered Luin. The cosmetic pets, some of the housing items, the face paint and carrying chicken consumables, and the cook recipes can now also be acquired at the Treasure Fields during the the Buried Treasure event for Buried Treasure Tokens as well as from the Hobnanigans vendors.

Traits:

• Stout-axe racial trait "Unyielding Will" no longer gives Vitality in addition to Will.

"Watch out for all the cliffs."

[Freenen]

One question, what about hunter :P

[Brunog97]

When will you fix hunter dps? You guys are totally blind to the most obvous fact in the game.

[Chris91]

Classes

• Champions - Bumping up their general DPS across the board. Possibly not as much as they need, but we'll get there.

Much welcome

Classes

• Rune-keeper Lightning Crits:
  - Lightning Rune-keepers were made too reliant on critical hits by the huge lightning critical bonuses they received from offensive attunement, these have been re balanced.
  - Bumps RK lightning skill dps by about 10%
  - Epic Conclusion DoT now lasts for (4->8) pulses.
  - Epic Conclusion no longer consumes buffs.
  - Ceaseless Argument & Writ of Lightning now both have 3s CDs.

I read that as a) RKs are too crit reliant and b) RKs are too reliant on Ceaseless Argument spam

I also want to mention that RKs power level is fine compared to Wardens and Burglars and compared to the dps checks in Remmorchant (and since you are buffing Champions I assume you want all dps classes on that power level as well)

So overall, I support both your goals as long as those changes are made in such a fashion that the resulting dps remains similiar. I have to test what the actual effect is though.

[JoRDee]

Dang no nerf to burgs or wardens. Now good champs will probably be doing 500k single target . Hunters still in the dungeon unless fire RKs come out to play which looks like you are trying to force that out.

[Napoleon21]

No sign of Enfeeble fix.

[Saruman_Of_Numbers]

Weaver skills Tainted Kiss, Virulent Poison, and Mephitic Kiss now use tactical damage like other Acid skills.

This is a pretty massive spider nerf.... spider's already mediocre DPS can now be debuffed by a cacophony of freep skills like frost lore and addle, making them even more useless compared to the FOTM blackarrow class with their bugged snares that ignore damage-type reductions and Steadfast that can go through walls.


Spider now joins the Reaver in the bottom tier of semi-useless creep classes for a huge variety of situations.

[cbfan14]

No sign of Enfeeble fix.

I'd be lying if I said I was surprised by this. It'll probably be a long time before we see a fix.

[Brunog97]

I bet you won't even read that thread SSG.

[Spilo]

This is a pretty massive spider nerf.... spider's already mediocre DPS can now be debuffed by a cacophony of freep skills like frost lore and addle, making them even more useless compared to the FOTM blackarrow class with their bugged snares that ignore damage-type reductions and Steadfast that can go through walls.


Spider now joins the Reaver in the bottom tier of semi-useless creep classes for a huge variety of situations.

I agree it's a tough spider nerf, but it's certainly something that increases the consistency of PvMP stuff. Having Spider damage tied to ranged damage as a tactical source, yet couldn't be BPEd was silly.

Now, the questions is, will SSG make this move a complete set by properly giving Weaver's a small DPS buff, or will it remain half-fixed? Hmmmm....

[Urundus]

Monster Play:

• Weaver skills Tainted Kiss, Virulent Poison, and Mephitic Kiss now use tactical damage like other Acid skills.

Seems it is once again possible to change creep skills.
Does that mean we can see some changes in the foreseeable future to the reaver class?
You know the one with skill tooltips of sub 10k and bleed tooltips of 2-3k in an offensive build?
The class with the broken skills and traits? The class with the useless and outdated skills and traits?

[Brunog97]

Seems it is once again possible to change creep skills.
Does that mean we can see some changes in the foreseeable future to the reaver class?
You know the one with skill tooltips of sub 10k and bleed tooltips of 2-3k in an offensive build?
The class with the broken skills and traits? The class with the useless and outdated skills and traits?

Exactly. Reavers have pathetic dps.

[Everbornn]

The fact that there is absolutely no mention of hunters in this preview is shocking. Buff. Them.

[BlitzKr1eg]

A mere 10% dmg buff is far from what RK's need to compensate for the major Nerfs... I guess only Burgs and Wardens will be the only viable DPS classes now (along with maybe champs).

[Brunog97]

The fact that there is absolutely no mention of hunters in this preview is shocking. Buff. Them.

I'm crying

[JoRDee]

Already reports of players running out of skills to use on RK on BR lul

[GameProFrreakk]

YAY SSG continues make there game worse! Ignores beorning trait tree bug that ive posted them on multiple streams/forums. Continues to bump champ dps? They are already doing great dps as there intended role (AOE DPS). Didnt buff hunter/bear dps to compete with wardens/rks/burgs.
Made a decent raid but trash loot to go with it, terrible class sets i guess you can't expect much from these devs.

[BlitzKr1eg]

YAY SSG continues make there game worse! Ignores beorning trait tree bug that ive posted them on multiple streams/forums. Continues to bump champ dps? They are already doing great dps as there intended role (AOE DPS). Didnt buff hunter/bear dps to compete with wardens/rks/burgs.

Loool, Bear isn't supposed to be a dps class, they already excel at 2 roles.

[Tullkas]

Champions - Bumping up their general DPS across the board. Possibly not as much as they need, but we'll get there.

Champs have Posted 100s of replies, suggestion's, Post's. What do you mean we'll get there? Raid has been out for a bit now make us Viable NOW. We still need a lot of other work we Have next to no survivabilty skills and low mits. Let's get there now.

[Osglinthor]

Funny how everyone here forgets what DPS classes were parsing before everyone started abusing fate stack.Calling for nerfs to certain classes while ignoring fate stack

[Finranduil]

• Stilettos are now spelled stilettos instead of stilettos.

Am I starting to get blind or is this just the same word spelled the same 3 times? Also agreeing with the others here. Sad about missing the much needed hunter buff...

Lorim

[LotroVidz]

Loool, Bear isn't supposed to be a dps class, they already excel at 2 roles.

"isn't supposed to be a DPS class" WHY do they have a DPS spec then? Such a stupid comment.

[Arandour]

Champions - Bumping up their general DPS across the board. Possibly not as much as they need, but we'll get there.

Champs have Posted 100s of replies, suggestion's, Post's. What do you mean we'll get there? Raid has been out for a bit now make us Viable NOW. We still need a lot of other work we Have next to no survivabilty skills and low mits. Let's get there now.

From what i read here they are spending time again with Rks,buffing,nerfing trying to make the yellow line more complex,thats why they gave us just row damage and not the deeper changes that we need,it was the fast and easy way.At least we got that, its something from nothing and it will help us in new raid at T3.Maybe in the future deeper changes will come and we need them cause the class is stacked at 105 lvl.When i have the time i will check at beta and write my feedback.

[BlitzKr1eg]

"isn't supposed to be a DPS class" WHY do they have a DPS spec then? Such a stupid comment.

For solo/non competitive play? With that logic Cappies too are supposed to be a top DPS.

[flirtswithmediocrity]

Thank you for addressing the boring gameplay of lightening rune keepers. After 15 minutes on the training dummy here are my observations.

1. epic conclusion does consume attunement ( it does not consume closing remarks buff )
2. it is still better to not trait closing remarks, due to thunderous words buff being up constantly without it ( although the gap is smaller then live )
3. scribe spark is only useful if ceaseless argument is down. this skill should be buffed
4. i found it better to stay at maximum attunement and cycle through ( ceaseless argument, scribe spark, write ) vs using consumers ( epic conclusion, shocking words, sustaining bolt ) although the difference was small.


recommendations

1. increase damage of sustaining bolt ( it did ~10% more damage then ceaseless argument on crits, small difference for an attunement consumer )
2. increase the crit chance of shocking words and epic conclusion in closing remarks ( make closing remarks worth traiting, and address underwhelming epic conclusion skill )

Look forward to the next build.